Loving Your Pets - Part 2

On an earlier blog post, I spoke about Embracing My Inner Crazy Cat Lady - Loving Your Pets. I realized that I never talked about feeding them better.

Our goal to feed our cats better came when Ziggy Stardust started having stomach issues.

The vet informed me that I would need to feed them something better than the cheaper store food we had been buying them.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that it didn’t cost that much more to upgrade their food. They ate less of the good stuff, so it was almost equivalent to what I spent to feed them more of the cheaper stuff.  Win.

Then, he mentioned that we should slow them down when they ate. On a behind-the-scenes trip at the zoo, the zookeepers told us how they used enrichment balls and feeders to help stimulate the animals when they fed them and to encourage the animals to "hunt" for their food. We figured we would give something similar a try. I purchased a few feeding balls from Amazon. They loved them. We also picked up a pachinko-style feeder and a cup feeder. One cat prefers to play pachinko and another loves the cups.  But, they will all still play with the feeder balls. They don't overeat and they enjoy rolling the balls around the kitchen.

Again, I had to embrace loving my cats, because having food balls rolling around the kitchen floor takes some getting used to. Luckily, since I fill the balls in the morning, they empty them each day and then clean up the stray food pieces overnight.  It seems to work well for us all.

This has also seemed to make them healthier and enriched their lives.  They are more playful and more engaged. Remember to love your pets and truly make them part of your life.